Apple Pledges $100 Million in Equipment to President Obama's ConnectED Initiative for Schools

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U.S. President Barack Obama today is announcing $750 million in corporate commitments for his ConnectED initiative to provide students with greater access to high-speed Internet connections. Apple is a key member of the group and has pledged $100 million in iPads, computers and other tools, according to an Associated Press report.

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Apple is pledging $100 million in iPads, computers and other tools. AT&T and Sprint are contributing free Internet service through their wireless networks. Verizon is pitching in up to $100 million in cash and in-kind contributions. And Microsoft is making Windows available at discounted prices and offering 12 million free copies of Microsoft Office software.

Obama was to announce the commitments Tuesday at a middle school in the Maryland suburbs near Washington. Also in the pipeline: an addition $2 billion that the Federal Communications Commission is setting aside from service fees over two years to connect another 20 million students to high-speed Internet.

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During the recent State of the Union address, President Obama mentioned that Apple and other tech companies would be providing the hardware and software needed to connect over 15,000 schools and 20 million students to the Internet in the next two years. Apple confirmed its role in the project in a statement provided to The Loop, but did not offer any specific details on its role at that time.

These corporate contributions will help fulfill ConnectED's goal of connecting 99 percent of U.S. students to the Internet within five years. When President Obama announced this goal last June, only one in five students had access to a broadband Internet connection.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

macrumors 603

The problem we have right now is too many students doing poorly in grade school and too many people picking dumb majors when they go to university. In what way does this solve either problem?

I'd much rather if we simply:
1 - Raised how much we paid teachers. (This way, the best potential teachers, the people being paid top dollar to go work for private companies, will actually view being a grade school teacher as a worthwhile career. Right now, if you end up with a really good teacher, it's because they're either already content with how much money they made elsewhere and retired, or because they feel so strongly that we need better teachers that they're willing to take the massive pay cut.)
2 - Made it easier to fire teachers that are lousy.
3 - Offered more scholarships for people going into STEM majors. A lot more. School is many times more expensive than the scholarships we're offering right now.

Edit: I can't believe I left this one off. Someone else said it and I'd like to add their comment to my more prominent post:

4 - Require parents to become more involved. Not necessarily at the school itself, but in their child's education. No matter how much money is spent, how much (or little) teachers are paid, or how many hours the kids spend in school, or how many standardized tests they take, the most consistent and determining factor is the parents.

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Edit: Good lord, why are you people supporting this? It wastes money and seems probable that it'll reduce the quality of education we give in public schools, not improve it.

macrumors 6502

I know when I was in high school and college, my teachers sucked at utilizing technology for teaching. Does anyone have insight into how teachers are doing these days with technology? Is it helping them teach in more advanced and impacting ways or not?

macrumors 603

I know when I was in high school and college, my teachers sucked at utilizing technology for teaching. Does anyone have insight into how teachers are doing these days with technology? Is it helping them teach in more advanced and impacting ways or not?

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No. All it does is provide students with more distractions.

That's not to say they're entirely worthless. Students use laptops for research, writing papers, and making slide shows. But they're guaranteed to also use it for gaming, social networking, etc, while in class. And no matter how hard you try to block them, it just takes one of them knowing how to bypass your settings and selling the secret to the rest of them.

macrumors regular

I think a bigger point is this: "John Thompson, former CEO of Symantec, will assume the role of Board Chairman". It seems like everything Symantec touches they ruin. Hope that culture doesn't come to MS.

macrumors 68000

There's enough threads about the NSA in this forum. Let's please try to keep this one somewhat related to the topic at hand.

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I agree that NSA bashing is not needed here, but I also think that a simple donation of a bunch of iPads is not so easy. How will security be dealt with? Are they going to place filters, firewalls, etc to ensure that our children can indeed get the best that technology can offer, but in a safe environment where we keep the creeps out that might try to take advantage of our youth.

macrumors 6502a

That's not to say they're entirely worthless. Students use laptops for research, writing papers, and making slide shows. But they're guaranteed to also use it for gaming, social networking, etc, while in class. And no matter how hard you try to block them, it just takes one of them knowing how to bypass your settings and selling the secret to the rest of them.

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At my high school people figured out the Wi-Fi passwords, used some proxies to access YouTube, FaceBook, etc...

Editor emeritus

... I also think that a simple donation of a bunch of iPads is not so easy. How will security be dealt with? Are they going to place filters, firewalls, etc to ensure that our children can indeed get the best that technology can offer, but in a safe environment where we keep the creeps out that might try to take advantage of our youth.

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That is generally dealt with by the school districts and also at the network level, not necessarily the device level (though Apple provides a configurator tool to lock down the device).

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